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October 10, 2005 - Introspection

Ahoy again from the I-Don't-Update-Until-Two-Weeks-Have-Gone-By place that I live in. I should really stop mentioning it, because it's very common. As usual, I'm a bad person.
But, to make up for it, I finally (two months after the fact) put up pictures from Marie and Mindy's visit! There are a few hundred, so be aware of that when viewing them, especially if you have a slow connection. Also notice that they haven't been pruned, so there may be some truly craptacular pictures in there. By all means let me know if you find something that should just be outright removed.
Things continue to continue, but I'm keeping the update short tonight, because I'm randomly feeling introspective, so I have a long piece written up. For the sake of boredom and personal ranting, you may want to ignore everything after this paragraph. See you in a couple weeks.

October 20, 2005 - And back to normal

Sooo... Getting back to normal after that mini-breakdown thing I had. Which, by the way, was really quite nothing... The next day I took a couple deep breaths and had a short talk with my boss about some things, which helped a lot. I think that part of the problem is that "having a job" is just so ridiculously different than "being a student". Now, pretty much everything I do relates back in some way to the job, whereas in college, everything I did pretty much involved avoiding work. It's a huge difference between the two, and one that I think I've been having some trouble adjusting to. Or maybe just identifying or accepting the change -- whatever, regardless, I think it's getting better.
So then, what else has been going on now that all that business is settled? The hard drive in my laptop died, so Dell sent me a new one, in a pleasantly surprising bit of good customer service. I've also been on the sick side of things for the last couple days with seasonal head-cold-type stuff, which of course means that I've been sleeping poorly; Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, so at 4:30 AM I'm sitting in my living room swapping hard drives out of a laptop, sneezing. What a sight to see.
I'm hoping to make it back to work tomorrow; I've taken a couple days at home because of this illness thing, but hopefully will feel good enough tomorrow to head back. We shall see, I suppose.
Shadow is just fine, aside from being a little restless and bored, since I've been in no shape to take him on a long walk recently. But he's been a trooper too, taking it all in stride and happily chewing his toys. I've got myself a good little dog.
Oh, and I guess I did a site thing last weekend too. Scroll to the bottom of this entry, and see on the right there, there are now a couple new links. The one labeled "(number) comments" will show you what other people have to say about this entry, and the link labeled "post comment" will let you say something. Bear in mind that these will be publicly visible, so try not to make too big a fool out of yourself when you're using them :) But please, I'd love some feedback; perhaps it will help me feel like I'm keeping in touch with people.
That's about all the news I have here -- congratulations to Marie on her recent engagement!

October 31, 2005 - Too long between updates. Again.

In work news, things are much better! My boss, who's pretty much the coolest guy ever, took me out to lunch last week and asked for feedback about my experiences so far. I'm not sure if it was because I seem like I need it or what, but he seems actually interested in what I have to say. So I prepared about four pages worth of stuff to talk about, which I think really surprised him, but it was pretty honest and pretty complete, covering a lot of things. He has some good advice for me, and I think I just have to slowly (and sometimes painfully) fall into the role I've taken. Altering a couple of my habits and a couple of my mindsets has been good so far, and here's hoping it will continue to do wonders. And amidst all of this trying-to-be-professional stuff, I went and lost my badge sometime between Friday evening and this morning. Brilliant.
Let's see, what else? Ah, I went out with Stephanie and her friend Jamie on Saturday night for Halloween after finding a purple hat and matching cane at the very last minute. We started out at a party in Seattle, which was pretty cool but kind of ... not very social, I guess. The girls didn't much care for it, so we left and went to a bar called Neighbors. Now, this was a pretty cool bar, I must say, especially if you're into the dancing scene, which unfortunately I'm not. The most distinguishing feature of Neighbors, though, is that for the most part, it's a gay bar. Going on Halloween provided a lot of interesting characters, interesting costumes, and a most interesting experience. 'Interesting' was a word I used a lot that night. Anyhow, it was a good night and the few pictures I took will be coming on the POTD shortly.
Another update with no site work. I would love to start a 'Stupidity of the Day' section, but I fear it would go the way of the Quote of the Day: Start out strong, then slowly fade into oblivion in a painful way...
And since everyone always asks about him, Shadow's doing fine. We took a couple trips to the dog park on Saturday, so he was pretty tuckered out this weekend. It's starting to get rainy here though, so there might be less and less of that as the winter goes on. He got a bunch of new toys recently, and if I can convince him to stop eating it, he might even get a blanket back in his crate when I go to work. Obedience school is almost finished, and it's been good for him, I think, though he does much better at some things (sitting, staying) than others (coming when called, not eating blankets).
And before I run out of time to say it ... Happy Halloween!